Raglan Road house sells for €2.55 million at auction

SALES RESULTS:THERE'S BEEN a lift in activity across Dublin with starter and middle market homes beginning to shift, and three auction sales last week adding to hopes for a recovery.

Sherry FitzGerald sold two properties under the hammer last week: 23 Raglan Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4 which sold for €2.55 million, and 46 Merton Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6 which fetched €1.55 million.

Over 70 people attended the Sherry FitzGerald auction room, for the first successful session there in over a year.

In fact with the fall-off in auctions in the last 12 months, the agency has been using the room as a lecture hall.

Five people competed for the the large period house at Raglan Road, which needs refurbishment. It had an AMV of €1.9 million.

Four bidders chased 46 Merton Road, Rathmines, Dublin 6, a fine Edwardian house also needing refurbishment, which had been guided at €1.2 million.

“This is good news for the top end of the market which has seen the greatest price correction,” said a spokesperson for Sherry FitzGerald. “These prices represent a 45 per cent reduction on what they might have achieved at the height of the market in 2006.”

On the same day, Lisney held an auction for Gyleen, 1 Barnacoille Park, Dalkey, Co Dublin. The four-bedroom house was withdrawn from auction at €715,000 and sold after for higher.

Meanwhile, Moyglare Manor, a 17-bedroom country house hotel in Maynooth, Co Kildare, has finally sold, having been on the market since the beginning of the slump in 2007. According to Robert Hoban of selling agent Savills the sale is a good example of the “immense difficulty” in finalising a transaction, even when a property has contracts signed and exchanged.

In the case of Moyglare, the contracts were signed and exchanged with a deposit in December 2008 with a four-week completion date. The closing date was extended three more times, to facilitate the new owners, a group of investors.

“What was meant to be a quick four-week closing ended up taking six months,” says Hoban.

Moyglare first went on the market asking €10 million, and sold for €3.3 million.

Two weeks ago, we reported the sale of Ladyrath, a 50-acre farm at Wilkinstown, Co Meath which was sold after auction for “substantially over” the AMV of €1 million.

The sale was handled by Raymond Potterton Auctioneers, not TE Potterton, as was reported.